Hi,
Were military ranks/titles ever hereditary in England/within the British Empire(incl. colonial America). If so when did the tradition end. I seem to remember reading or hearing about but couldn’t find any supporting evidence. I appreciate your feedback. Thanks.
davidmich
Closest I can think of is the position of Earl Marshal. Still exists and is heredity but except for coronation s is a sinecure. It was once a senior position in the army. Not for several hundred years thoughm
No. They were sold, but they couldn’t be inherited.
Thank you for your prompt reply
davidmich
From Wikipedia:
And that’s one reason the British were known to have the worst cavalry in Europe.
Note that ranks were *not *sold in the navy - every admiral worked his way up from midshipman. Unlike their army, the Brits took their navy seriously.
Ranks were not sold in the artillery or engineers either.
That’s because all a cavalry or infantry officer had to do was wave his sword and say “After me!”, which any idiot can manage. Artillery and engineering officers had to actually *know *something.
Military ranks (up to colonel) were sold in France too, and I would guess it was the same all over Europe at the time (It ended sooner in France than in the UK, obviously, since we had revolutions and such things…)
So, assuming that the British cavalry indeed had a particularly bad reputation, I doubt it was a result of the sale of military ranks since AFAIK that was the norm. Anyway, the British army in general never had a good reputation until WWI (except in Independence War-related American national legend).
Not even that. Many officers were absent most of the time, even sometimes during wars. To give an extreme example, I don’t know if it was the case in the UK, but in France a regiment could be bought for a child.
(hence the necessity of lieutenant-colonels since someone had to actually be in charge)
Was the buying of military commission also common/rife in Revolution-period America? Among colonials?
davidmich
Wasn’t being a member of the gentry usually a requirement for an officer’s commission? They had money of course, but also the social class was a consideration too.
Except for that little unpleasantness in the Peninsula, and then that little skirmish on the Belgian frontier in 1815. 
How Anglo of you to bring up the half-assed comeback tour when everybody knows it was over at Leipzig.
I also read that the reason that they didn’t sell commissions in the Royal Navy was that it is imperative to have somebody in charge of a ship on the high seas who actually knows what he is doing.
They got arseraped by the Dutch one too many times. Reforms were made in the 1660’s.
Americans had no standing army, so there really wasn’t even the opportunity for this.
A well-to-do man or a village leader could raise a militia outfit, and took an officer’s title for leading them. They would be incorporated into the larger army during the Revolution. In various guises that kept on being a tradition until the Civil War. By the end of that war, the need for professional, trained, competent leaders was obvious. The practice mostly died out, except for one last hurrah in the Spanish-American war. The Rough Riders were technically the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three, but the only one to see combat.
Even so, this is a different system than in Europe. We didn’t have the class system and we didn’t have the perpetual standing armies.
“Little unpleasantness” might be the right word. It’s not surprising that British people would be particularly familiar with the campaigns/battles they were involved in during the Napoleonic wars but in the grand scheme of things those were fought mainly by other nations and British direct military involvement on land was rather minimal.
I heard about the presence of British soldiers in Spain/Portugal for the first time when, well into my 20s, I bought a cardboard wargame about some battles of the “peninsular war”.
Certainly, it’s a reflection of my own ignorance, but given that the Revolutionnary/Napoleonic era is quite well covered in French schools, it shows that this war is perceived as a minor sideshow barely worth mentioning (on the other hand I remember pretty well being taught about the Spanish guerillas). Meanwhile, campaigns against Prussians, Austrians, Russians, took chapters. And deservedly so. I just looked up wikipedia, and it mentions 30 000 men for the British expeditionnary force in the Iberian peninsula. Battle of Austerlitz alone : 85 000 Russians and Austrians. Battle of Leipzig : 375 000 Russians, Austrians, Prussians and Swedes. Even Waterloo : 25 000 British, 17 000 Dutch, 50 000 Prussians, 20 000 other Germans. Not extremely impressive.
The UK waged war against France during this era with her navy, with her money and with her diplomatic corps. Only minimally so with her army. In fact, this isn’t limited to the Napoleonic Era. Historically, the UK always tried to avoid fighting on land whenever possible.
In the Middle Ages, nobiliary titles often involved military duties (not always, but the immense majority of the time - titles without military duties tended to be later grants); those military duties were inherited with the land and title, but it was a “pack” and eventually the military duties got their own names, which are the ones that were generally not hereditary.